Before this year I didn't know anyone that talked about the WNBA at all. Most of the people I knew, and almost all of them are sports enthusiasts, tended to forget that the league even existed. The only time we ever talked about it was to moan about how they were promoting the league in sort of a guilt-trip sort of way kind of like "if you don't watch this it is because you are sexist." That wasn't the case though, we didn't watch it because it wasn't entertaining and the overall skill level was kind of laughable. To make matters worse, the attitude of the players and how they were calling for equal pay was just annoying especially when you considered that the WNBA has lost money every single year that it has existed.
This year was different though and it was all because of one player that created, and delivered, on some serious hype.
That person in Caitlin Clark.
She faced a serious uphill battle in her rookie season and this included being targeted by other team players who although they wouldn't admit it, were jealous of the fact that she was getting so much attention. There were calls about how the fans are racist and homophobic and the usual BS like that and accusations were flying around about how the only reason why anyone liked Caitlin was because she is white and straight in a league that is filled with mostly lesbian black women.
I never avoided watching the WNBA because it is filled with black lesbians, I avoided watching the WNBA for the same reason everyone else did: It wasn't good.
I don't really have much to compare it to because up until this year I never watched a single game of WNBA in it's 20 or so years of existence. Neither did anyone else. However, Caitlin Clark brought an enthusiasm to the league the likes of which have never been seen before and likely isn't going to happen again in my lifetime. All of a sudden the world was watching WNBA and primarily this is specifically for Caitlin Clark. Sure, some of the controversy surrounding her made us want to watch more but kind of like in MMA, when someone is constantly targeted by other players/fighters yet still manages to excel, it makes us want to tune in even more to see what sort of nasty crap is going to get thrown at her and still have her emerge victorious.
The biggest example of this was earlier on in the season where CC was basically assaulted during a game against the Chicago Sky by Chennedy Carter. This was off the ball and there was no reason for contact at all, let alone contact that results in Clark flying to the ground. To make this bad situation even worse, Angel Reese, who was a rival of Caitlin's in college, can be seen celebrating on the sidelines after the egregious foul took place. The foul was called, but this wasn't just a foul, this was an attack and one that should have resulted in fines, ejection, and possibly a ban. The foul was later upgraded to flagrant and Carter was fined by the league for this, yet things like this continued towards Caitlin Clark throughout the season by players on other teams.
This video shows all the fouls but if you don't have a lot of time skip ahead to 6 mins 30 to where the fouls start to get really crazy.
This targeted abuse continued the entire season yet it didn't really seem to affect Caitlin's game as she would go on to easily win Rookie of the Year and finished 4th in voting for MVP of the entire league. There are some that would argue that she was intentionally screwed out of the MVP discussion because of various reasons.
That's a very long discussion for another day though. The reason I am writing all of this is because these lunatic jealous players that are trying to injure Caitlin are about to get a taste of what the league would look like if she were to get seriously injured and not be able to play anymore.
With Indiana's loss to Connecticut this week, the Fever are eliminated from the playoffs and we will not see them play again until next season. Although the next round of playoff games are yet to happen, I guarantee you viewership is going to drop, dramatically.
The Indiana games were already getting around 4 times as many viewers as any of the other games and they were the only team that had a completely sold out season. Even when Indiana was visiting other cities those stadiums would sell out but only for the games against Caitlin Clark and Indiana. As far as TV viewers are concerned, the 18 most watched games of the season all featured the Indiana Fever. Almost all of the rest of the games that are even featured as an example for increased viewership this year as opposed to years past all have Indiana Fever in them. The only exception in the top 25 are games that just happened to come on TV directly following Indiana games and I am sure this is not a coincidence. People simply hadn't changed the channel yet.
The WNBA playoffs saw massive amounts of people tuning in globally and what is so impressive about this is that many of the games took place at the same time that NFL games were being broadcast and if you know anything about the USA audience, NFL games always win in ratings. The fact that the WNBA was able to maintain such an amazing viewership when their competitors are the most popular game in the USA is pretty incredible. However, these 2-3 million viewers per game was ONLY true for the Indiana games. The other playoff games had 1/2 to 1/4 the amount of viewers and this is something that I think we are going to see get much worse for the remainder of the WNBA playoffs.
There is some speculation that they could lose up to 75% of the amount of people tuning in because as much as the WNBA and a lot of their jealous players don't want to admit it, people still don't like WNBA, they just like Caitlin Clark. This, of course, could change if the league and the other players would simply embrace the fact that Caitlin is the reason why anyone is tuning in, and try to make a name for themselves in the meantime by putting on quality performances themselves rather than simply trying to sabotage Caitlin every damn chance they get.
In the coming weeks it will be interesting to see how huge the drop in viewership is. I know for me and everyone else that I know, we have no plans of watching any more of the tournament and will just catch the box score the following day. This is still a lot more effort than I ever would have put into ever caring about women's basketball though, so even without Caitlin playing, this is a massive improvement over anything they have ever tried in the past.
I don't want them to fail in their ratings and attendance, I just know that they will. Also, hopefully this will be an eye-opener for the haters out there: If Caitlin falls, the rest of the league will fall with her.